It was
known as "The House That The Hound Built." And for the last eight years of his
life, George "Hound Dog" Lorenz put
his heart and soul into it.

Lorenz, who championed rhythm and blues throughout his
three-decade radio career, applied for and got the final available FM signal in
Buffalo in 1962. On December 10, 1964, WBLK went
on the air at 93.7 (the call letters stood for BenjaminL.Kulick,
an early financial backer of the station). From the beginning,WBLKplayed
rhythm and blues, an oddity on an FM dial that was at the time mostly classical,
jazz or easy listening fare. But the Hound wanted to rock!

Lorenz got his start in radio in the
mid-40s at Buffalo'sWXRA. He
moved to mornings atWJJLNiagara
Falls, N.Y., in 1948, originally using the moniker 'Ol Man Lorenz. He started
calling himselfHound Dog Lorenzin
1951, getting the name from the expression "doggin' around." As he explains it,"One
of the jive expressions at the time was if you were hangin’ around the corner,
you were doggin’ around. So I’d come on and say ‘ Here I am to dog around for
another hour.’ That’s how they got to call me the hound dog.”

Lorenz
went to WKBW in
1955, where he gained a massive following thanks to the station's huge
50,000-watt signal. He left three years later with the station about to switch
to a Top 40 format. The Hound was no fan of Top 40, claiming it “is
hurting the record industry, is lowering radio listening, and is decreasing a
new artists chance to make it."

In 1960 Lorenz moved to suburban Buffalo stationWINE,
which ironically became the city's first R&B outlet later that decade asWUFO.
AfterWINE, he began
syndicating his show via World Wide Programming. The next stop wasWBLK,
where he stayed until his death on May 29, 1972 at age 53. And all these years
laterWBLKis
still playing rhythm and blues, though nowadays the format is referred to as
urban contemporary. The Hound would be proud.